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Woodburn Planning Commission Meeting Minutes February 10, 2022 CONVENED: The Planning Commission met in a 7 p.m. virtual public meeting session via GoToMeeting, Chair Piper presiding. ROLL CALL: Chair Piper Present Vice-Chair Ellsworth Present Commissioner Hernandez-Mejia Present Commissioner Berlin Present Commissioner Corning Present Commissioner Bartel Present Commissioner Lassen Present Staff Present: McKenzie Granum, Assistant City Attorney Chris Kerr, Community Development Director Colin Cortes, AICP, CNU-A Senior Planner Dan Handel, AICP, Associate Planner Introduction: Chair Piper asks new Commissioner Hernandez-Mejia to introduce herself. Minutes: None. Business from the Audience: None. Communication: Community Development Director Chris Kerr states that there is none. Work shop: Senior Planner Colin Cortes begins the workshop with the brief presentation of the House Bill 4006: Rent Burden. He explains what the House Bill 4006: Rent Burden is and what it is used for areas that are considered rent burdened populations. Cortes then moves forward with the questions specified by state law, providing both English and Spanish translations. Cortes mentions that the floor will be open for anyone in the public who wishes to speak or ask questions about this workshop and that Karina, the translator for tonight’s meeting, is present to help translate between Spanish to English and vise-versa. Before moving forward, Kerr asks Karina to translate the first slide from English to Spanish for those watching the presentation. After the translation, Cortes states that the Planning Dept. received a letter of testimony from the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation. There are summery handouts in English and Spanish. There are print copies in the Council Chambers and copies online, with a page specifically about rent burden. The rent burden page is specifically about organizations and agencies that provide housing services, including financial assistance. ---PAGE BREAK--- 2 Lastly, the state administrative rule requires that the City collect names and affiliations of people who do talk about affordable housing at the meeting. Cortes mentions that there is a sign-up sheet in the chamber for people to request time to speak. For those watching virtually from home and want to comment, the council would like to have the full name and address. Kerr asks Karina to translate what Senior Planner Cortes said from English to Spanish. After she is done translating, Chair Piper gives the approval to move forward for anyone who wishes to testify. After seeing numerous of the general public raising their hands, the testimony then begins. Testimony from Audience: Maria Teresa Amador: 1274 5th St, Apt. 11D, Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant. She enjoys living in the apartment in the mention address and has been living there for 5 years. Ms. Amador is a single mother of 4 children, one of them being autistic and mentions that being a family with lower resources and that she feels like living there is a privilege. She would like others to have the same opportunity to live there as she does, and she said she feels safe, while not worrying too much about if she is going to make rent that month. Martha Lopez: 1750 Park Ave, Apt D103, Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant. She has two testimonies, one from her friend, who couldn’t be here tonight and the other is herself. She is a volunteer for an organization to take masks to low-resource living areas and mentions that most of the places she visits are small and are housing up to 8 people living in an apartment. Her main question is how the commission will bring more awareness of these types of meetings to the community of low resources, in order for them to be able to express their concerns and needs. She ends with the comment that low resource apartments are needed. Adriana Aguilera: 1154 Kennedy St, Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant. She lives in Woodburn and wants to mention that the rent is expensive and salaries are very low. She lives in a two bedroom apartment and there’s 7 people living in the apartment; they have to use the living room to sleep. The cost of the apartment is 1330 dollars plus the rest of expenses. She would like there to be more apartments for low resources; an example of being that a fellow neighbor mentioned to her that the landlord charges an extra 50 dollars per day for the late rent, and it’s hard to pay the rent on time when they don’t get paid on time at work. Elia Cordero: 1150 E. Cleveland St, Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant. She talks about her past, starting that she has been living in Woodburn for 19 years and was living on the other side of Woodburn back then. When the owner had to sell the house where she was living in, it took her 7-8 months to find an apartment to live in and at the time she was working in the fields and was making 13 dollars an hour. It was difficult to qualify for an apartment with that money; she now pays 1400 dollars, with 500 dollars in bills. She’s a single mom with 4 kids and works to jobs, one being her main one and the second being an person who delivers masks and hand sanitizes to low resource areas, while explain to them about Covid-19. She concludes that there is a lot of need to have access and a lot of people need these low-income apartments. Ellie Ortiz Mendoza: Nuevo Amanecer Apartments, 1274 5th St, Apt 11C, Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant/student Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. She wanted to say that there should be more affordable housing for agricultural low-income families, because she wanted to share that her family was one of the lucky ones to be accepted into these apartments. Before, her family would live in a house and shared it with another family. By the time her mom had enough money saved up to get their own place and would be applying to many apartments, she would never qualify due to her being low-income. Thanks to the help of Nuevo Amanecer, they now have their own place. Aide Robles: Nuevo Amanecer 1274 5th St. Apt. 23A Woodburn, OR 97071, renter/tenant Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. She advocates for having/building homes for low-income communities. There is a large population here of people of color, especially the Latino community and from everyone who has testified, that there is evidence that we need low-income housing. ---PAGE BREAK--- 3 Larry Kleinman: 1790 Landau Dr, Woodburn OR 97071, Farmworker Housing Development Corp. (FHDC) board member. Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. His message to the Planning Commission and to the city, is that we need affordable housing and him agreeing with the other testimonies that were said before. The point he wants to bring into the conversation, is that the incredible growth that Woodburn is now experiencing. His conversation with Eric and other members of the city and how Woodburn is having more development. His main question and challenge is “Are we keeping pace, even with that growth?” Kleinman believes that the answer is no and that he is urging the council and the city to set concrete metrics, concrete timeline, strategies and investments. He refers to the list of 10 recommended housing actions. He talks about the 50 year history of affordable housing and the importance of having affordable housing to this day. Gabriela Peña: 154 Harrison St, Woodburn, OR 97071 Manager of Aware Food Bank rep. Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. She is here to advocate for housing and by looking at the poverty level 24%, which is Woodburn and having 3,000 new units coming in, she would like to know where we are equitability looking at serving our community? Where are we equitability looking at bringing in opportunity for our members of the community? Especially the ones that are already here, who are under-housed and under-shelter, but don’t have the proper housing to raise kids and families. Peña even has to refer some families to look into Salem, in order to help them find affordable housing, because even with all her networking and trying to bring resources to the community in Woodburn, housing is difficult to find because there is none. City Councilor Alice (“Ali”) M. Swanson: 885 Stark St, Woodburn OR 97071 City councilor Ward II. Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. She has a few things to discuss, the first being that she works with those who are houseless, mostly with those who are working-houseless in the city of Woodburn. These are considered to be long-time residents and they have been unhoused for a amount of time. We work with them with our partners in the community, who own and operate rental housing, and the processes is long and laborious. Swanson feels for the people who are stuck in the situation of either living in their cars or can’t afford the continuous application fees, while still working 2-3 jobs and still being considered under the cutoff line, which would allow them to have access to use some of the partnered organizations that Swanson works with. Swanson is seeing the disparity between the population, what their living wage is and what the affordability of the housing is and is mainly here tonight to hopefully hear some solutions. Anthony Veliz: 1501 Dahlia St, Woodburn, OR 97071. Lifelong resident of Woodburn. Former City Council, Former School Board Member, Former President Board President Woodburn Downtown Assoc. Veliz is very active and involved member of the community. He said the need is there for affordable housing, for not only Woodburn but also in the entire state of Oregon and across the nation. He thinks that any affordable housing project that is coming to Woodburn, we should welcome and work with it. He knows that there’s some concern with taxes, but with Amazon coming in, they’ll pick up the slack. He hopes that not only the Planning Commission, the council and city staff could streamline any process that any company that might want to build affordable housing, such as WishCamper, and work with these types of private and public organizations. Terri Gonzalez 1560 E. Lincoln St, Woodburn, OR Phone # [PHONE REDACTED]. She is involved with The Woodburn Community Meal and The Future of Woodburn Opportunities Center. The community meal averages about 400 people a week at the community meal. The project that she’s working on is with the 8 Acres that her church is sponsoring the project and identifying it as affordable housing. Part of the 8 acres that they are looking to develop would before affordable housing. She said that she appreciates the words Larry Kleinman said, that there needs to be some specific initiatives. She feels like with the growth of Woodburn, it was just a matter of time that the town would experience this kind of growth; that we should been far ahead of this problem, but now we are desperately behind this situation. She encourages city staff to have initiatives for any projects, apartments and housing, that there would be a percentage of that to be affordable housing, including affordable housing in the senior estates. Debbie Panton 1785 N. Front St, Woodburn, OR 97071. Woodburn H.S. teacher. Phone# 503-980- 6102. She would like to give her perspective of being a teacher in Woodburn for over 17 years. Where it used to be rare to see houseless students, it is now 1% of each class that she has a houseless student. She said it’s not healthy and doesn’t help the anxiety that the youth has and it not good for Woodburn. She points out the number of teachers that are teaching in the Woodburn school district grew up in Woodburn ---PAGE BREAK--- 4 and are giving back to the community. She encourages the Planning Commission and staff to think about the future and with the new construction coming, it would be really nice to have integrated affordable housing, so there won’t be created pockets of poverty, including the senior estates to be more affordable for fixed income seniors. Her final note is that she encourages that Woodburn pays and invests in a way that serves the community. Patricia McGuffin 1720 Princeton Rd, Woodburn, OR 97071. A tenant in the Senior Estates. She was born and raised in the Woodburn/Hubbard area. Her grandfather, Thomas Workman, was mayor of Woodburn a long time ago. Her family has lived in the Woodburn/Hubbard area for all their lives, including her. She said that Woodburn needs to be there for middle and low-income families. That we need to stand up for those families and be there for them. Woodburn needs to show initiative and change, in order to be there for those families. As a community, we need to stand up for all of humanity and make housing affordable for everyone. Abby Velasco 635 Fir St, Woodburn OR 97071. Phone# [PHONE REDACTED]. Community member and student teacher at Woodburn H.S. She has been in Woodburn her whole life and has seen the impact that housing had on family and friends, and now on the lives of many of her students. She has students tell her that they live with 17 other people in a 4 bedroom home; this takes a toll on her students, as they aren’t getting enough sleep try to completing homework, and the living situation is taking a toll on her students’ well-being, as well as academically. She’s advocating for students, families, and members of the community, as well advocating to advertise these types of meeting and bring the community in to get more input. Clara Schmidt 270 Marshall St, Woodburn OR 97071. She has been seeing how much our community members have been struggling to find affordable housing. Her family has tried to helped several friends to find affordable housing and places to rent. She mentions about the new development that been happening in Woodburn, most of the new houses look expensive and could cause someone to go into debt trying to afford it. She thinks it should be a priority to use developable land for affordable housing and places for people to rent, due to the population of Woodburn who need a form of affordable housing service. Maria (“Meg”) Elena Guerra 1274 5th St. Ste 1-A, Woodburn OR 97071 Executive Director for Farmworker Housing Development Corp. (FHDC). She works with many organizations and people who are in this meeting. She talks about statistics of housing in the United States, such as the United States has 44 million renting households. She has some ideas, which are from both her organization and a community of housing developments, in order to benefit the small town. One idea is Amazon since they will bring in more jobs. Another idea is taxing the construction companies and new development, in order to develop affordable housing. Lastly, she suggests to be cautious with selecting organizations that Woodburn would support for developing housing. She supports affordable ownership and FHDC will start a program to help families move forward with that process. Neida (no last name) 1274 5th St, Phone# [PHONE REDACTED]. High School Student. She is currently living in Nuevo Amanecer and she’s thankful that her family lives there since they are a family of 8, living in an apartment of 3. She brings out a map with the new development projects and would like to know which ones will have affordable housing. Chris Kerr, Community Development Director, answers by saying the two properties that are affordable housing. Neida says it’s not enough and hopes to have more options in future for affordable housing, due to families needing affordable housing. Nancy Kellar 1660 Finzer Way. Senior Estates tenant. Keller begins to tell her story and she lived in Woodburn for 3 years where she purchased her home. She has lived in Oregon before and said back then Woodburn was very affordable. Now a retiree, she sees housing prices and comparing now to back then, she wouldn’t be able to afford a home with the prices now. She’s a volunteer for The Woodburn Community Meal and sees the need of the families and people. She appreciate hearing the thoughts of those who we don’t hear often and the support for investing in the community. Chair Piper asks for any more testimonies. Hearing none, he asks the Planning Commissioners if they have any comments. Commissioner Corning repeating with the witnesses said; that no one wants to be in this ---PAGE BREAK--- 5 position, Maria Guerra said families are suffering, and Martha asks “what is the plan?” leaving Corning to admit that she doesn’t know. Commission Berlin is in agreement with Commissioner Corning, but her main concern is that she doesn’t know how there can be affordable housing because it’s so expensive to build today. Chair Piper has thought about this topic and said he reference the WDO. He said that we the greater city have a vision for what we want our community to look like, as he references different types of ordinance in the WDO and a standard is set. Chair Piper then talks about how the city is in a stuck in a tough spot financially, due to the taxing structure in the State of Oregon, limits the amount of money the city can tax. Therefore, the city doesn’t have the money to put in these infrastructures. He gives an example of someone wanting to build something, the city charges them to do these new development and from there it gets expensive. Chair Piper suggest that the state needs to be involved and provide better funding and give a little property tax relief for a portion to affordable housing, then it’ll be plausible. After Chair Piper is finished, Vice-Chair Ellsworth is next to speak. She proceeds into talking about her upbringing and how similar it was to the testimonies from the witnesses. She grew up with her single mom and lived with another single mom and there was a total of 8 kids between them. Her childhood was considered homeless or dealing with housing insecurities. She mentions the difficulties in finding new places to live, to the point that they would live with other family members. She thanks everyone who was on this call and that she is listing to their stories. It hurts her heart to hear that we have so many families struggling. She wants them to know that she understands and that she has been there. She is also a bit of a realist and appreciates what Chair Piper said because as much as she would like to be part of the city to say yes to housing, the city can’t do that. In agreeing with Chair Piper, the State of Oregon needs to step up and come up with solutions that are long-term, equitable, and focused on helping our community thrive. She thanks everyone for coming tonight and for sharing their stories. She acknowledges the suggestions Maria Guerra sent and thinks the City Council should look and consider them. Chair Piper closes the Rent Burden Work Shop. He moves on to the next item. Business from the Commission: The item is a public hearing for the Legislative Amendment 21-01, following the last workshop of Jan. 13, 2022. The public hearing of legislative amendments of the Woodburn Development Ordinance, to administer fully the transportation system plan; As well as clarify and strengthen develop standards in related to transportation, improvements associated with land developments, staff recommendations for the commission. Recommends approval and move it on to the City Council. Senior City Planner Colin Cortes will be presenting the presentation. Before he starts, he asks Assistant City Attorney McKenzie Granum if she needs to read any statements before he starts the presentation. Granum said that there is no statement, since this is a type of public hearing that doesn’t require one. She does said what needs to be included after presentation like public testimony. Cortes thanks Karina for her translation services from the Rent Burden Workshop and wishes her a good night. Cortes begins the presentation. He states that this presentation is for Legislative Amendments for a Type V to the Woodburn Development Ordinance. Planning Commission makes recommendations about Type V, while City Council makes final decision. Cortes gives a bit of background about the process of the work session, such as the draft and past recommendations. He then moves to talk about the staff response from the last workshop. Granum adds that there is going to be a proposal that will add 8 new chargers. Granum states that they probably won’t all arrive at once, but it’s supposed to be a proposal for the next 3-5 years, but defiantly will be an increase at the transit center. After that, Cortes shows what the motion would look like if the Planning Commission would like to vote in favor of the Legislative Amendment LA-21, and also suggest an alternate motion if the Planning Commission would like to proceed, but with a few things to considered. Chair Piper asks if there are any questions for Cortes. Commissioner Berlin notes that someone made a comment on the community about someone stealing catalytic converters post from the parking lot by the freeway, asks if there is any cameras in that lot. Cortes responds saying he doesn’t know for sure, but what he understands is that the Department of Transportation manages the park and ride. Commissioner Berlin ---PAGE BREAK---